5 ms·
Advertising only works when you get exposed to it. The sheer maliciousness of the advertising industry succeeded in one thing as far as I'm concerned: I make su
by Yetanfou 9y ago
Advertising only works when you get exposed to it. The sheer maliciousness of the advertising industry succeeded in one thing as far as I'm concerned: I make sure we - as in my family and myself - get exposed to as little advertising as possible, and that we buy as little as possible of those things which are being advertised. How?
- we ditched television and broadcast radio
- we burn printed commercials without looking at them, the exception being the local supermarket's weekly handout
- we ditched our subscription to a printed newspaper and get our news from the 'net through a news reader
- ads are blocked on the router using a local name server with a blocklist, on the router through a net block firewall and on all devices using adblockers and dns blocking
- we buy second-hand as much as possible which a) gives us more for our money, b) leads to less waste, c) the proceeds generally go to some charity and c) provides an extra level of indirection between whatever is being advertised and what we buy
- we don't buy processed food whenever possible
- we don't "go shopping" without having a clear target, when we do go out to get something we generally have a list of things to get and tend to stick to this. Of course this is not a hard law, we sometimes buy things on the spur of the moment but we generally think twice or three times before buying
I probably forgot to mention quite a few things but it already reads as if we live in some kind of sect. We don't, not by a long stretch. We just don't like being used, that's all.
- mrleiter 9y agoThis approach reminds of how to maintain privacy: constantly (as in a process) and damn it can be exhausting over time. Very cool, though!
- amelius 9y agoThat's awesome. I'm hoping that in a few years those tasks can all be handled by AI/ML. For example, you can watch television, but it will automatically go dark when an ad shows up. Or even fancier, you go outside with your augmented reality glasses, and all ads (e.g. billboards) will be automatically replaced by e.g. pieces of art.
- alanbernstein 9y agoIf ad blockers get popular for TV, I'm pretty sure producers will start heavily embedding advertising in the content, which will make it worse for everybody.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoDo you mean like directly within-window advertisements in addition to the already-pervasive product placement?
- amelius 9y agoIn many countries it is illegal if advertising is not clearly identifiable as such. That's why in newspapers, you'll often see the word "advertisement" above ads.
- sudouser 9y agoeven better to replace that with 'consume', 'reproduce' messages ;)
- latexr 9y ago> we burn printed commercials without looking at them I hope you say that figuratively. If not, why not recycle them instead? > we don't "go shopping" without having a clear target […] we sometimes buy things on the spur of the moment What I usually do is go shopping with clear targets for what I need that trip, but I also have in mind a few things that I like to get but are non-essential. After I get everything that I need, I quickly go through the store and zone in on the non-essentials to see if they are at a discount, and snatch them if they are.
- Yetanfou 9y ago> I hope you say that figuratively. If not, why not recycle them instead? Nope, burn'm we do, mostly. We live on a farm in the Swedish countryside, the house is warmed using a wood burning stove and a wood-burning cooking stove. Those commercials do just fine to light the things, especially those printed on newsprint. The glossies generally get recycled as those don't burn well and are full of nasty chemicals but the newspaper-like folders get "recycled locally".